Geology through Literature - Our Town

Next up in the Geology Through Literature section is Our Town by Thorton Wilder. You can check out a downloadable packet at the site with directions, answers, and lessons learned. See just the directions and questions below.

Using Our Town by Thorton Wilder

Geology is not only useful for a scientific purpose but it can also be used as a scene setter. That is how it is used in Our Town. To give the audience a sense of time and place the narrator of the story describes the history and location of the town including the geology and anthropology. The purpose of this project is to take his description and determine whether it is valid or not. Or could this just be a case of the author taking geological and anthropological words and imputing them into a story, whether they make sense or not?

Project Description

1. Read Our Town by Thorton Wilder.
2. Write down all of the important sentences and phrases that describe both the geology of the town and it’s location on a map. You will use this information along with some references from the internet to determine what is correct and what is made up.
3. Use that information to answer the following questions:

Questions

1. What is the name of the town and the state that the story takes place in?

2. Does this town actually exist?
3. What town is closest to the coordinates given in the text? Is it the town named? Note: The coordinates are given in NAD27 which is an old system but the difference to the more recent NAD83 is only about 10 meters so it should not matter.Use the coordinates from the text on the website:

http://atlas.mapquest.com/maps/latlong.adp.

You have to place a negative “-” in front of the longitude

since it is in the Western Hemisphere, otherwise you will

get a result in Russia.

4. The play mentions four different types of rocks that the town lies on. List the rock types and their respective ages. Note: One does not have a given age.

5. Place the rocks in the cross section below with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on top. Assume the one rock layer without an age is the second youngest.

6. Does the comment “I may say it’s some of the oldest land in the world.” make sense regarding the rock that they are speaking about? Why or why not? I recommend using a geologic time scale for this one.

7. Using the geology map at http://www.nhgeology.org/nhbedrock.htm (there is a larger pdf on the site) does the age of the granite make sense? Why or Why not?
8. Using the above geology map what is the oldest age the granite could actually be. Hint: You should probably look up what rocks make up the Massabesic Gneiss Complex and the Rye Complex.
9. Assuming the town is southwest of Manchester, is it possible that one of these rock units could be what was actually described?
10. Which one would be most likely?
11. Rearrange the rock units with the corrected age of the granite below. Assume the rock unit without an age is now the youngest.
12. Is the basalt mentioned logical? You might want to check out http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/LivingWith/VolcanicPast/. Why or why not?

13. The text mentions some fossils. Which of the four units could be the likely source of the fossils? There may be multiple correct answers.

14. Anthropology – What is the name of the Amerindian tribe mentioned in the story that originally occupied the region?

15. What is the range this tribe actually covered and does it cover the area given in the story?

16. What state is mentioned where the marble building stone comes from?

17. Can you get marble here?

18. If you can get marble here what is a formation it could have come from? Keep in mind the transportation distances, closer to the town the better. There may be multiple correct answers.
I recommend using this site: http://www.anr.state.vt.us/dec/geo/resourceinx.htm to find where they dig for the marble.
And this site: http://www.anr.state.vt.us/dec/geo/centmap.htm to find the name of the formations.

Any comments or suggestions (or corrections) please let me know.

Geological Destinations - Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats

Geological Destinations

The Bonneville Salt Flats

I like to highlight some of the Geological Destinations that can be found across the country not specifically within a National Park.

Entrance to the park

Using my GPS to find where we are

The Great Salt Lick

Literally in the middle of nowhere, from behind

Literally in the middle of nowhere, from the right side

Literally in the middle of nowhere, from the left side

And literally in the middle of nowhere, from the front

Forgot my rock hammer to get a sample so I had to use a tire iron to no success.

The great Salt Lake Metaphor Tree, I don't know.

I'm Going to be a DOCTOR!!!!!!!

I just wanted it to be posted that I got into Grad school today at the University of Utah. I'm not sure what program I am going to be studying yet but it will likely be related to paleontology, just not vertebrate paleontology directly. Which I am actually happy about because as I have talked with people I have found out it would definitely be better to have a broader background when applying to jobs and since I wish to be a college professor at a small college one day, they are likely not going to want someone entrenched in Vert Paleo.

Geology in Pop Culture - Happy St Patrick's Day

Geology in Pop Culture

Since I am mostly Irish I figured I would provide a link to the the Yahoo! article explaining some of the Irish myths surrounding St Patrick's Day.

http://events.yahoo.com/stpatricksday/2009/

There is one that says that St Patrick was not born in Ireland, which I thought was common knowledge.

But an interesting thing that makes sense, although I never thought of it, was that St Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland. They were never there in the first place. Evolutionarily speaking this makes perfect sense, but again I had never thought of it before. The other stuff is pretty interesting as well and you should take a gander at it.

Scientific Discussion - Darwinism

Scientific Discussion

So I just read this article from the New York Times called "Darwinism must die so that evolution may live" And it is an interesting article about how Darwin's theories of evolution are basically what the majority of people today believe what evolution is. Now I have read The Origin of Species about a year and a half ago and since it is on my 100 Greatest Books list I wrote a little blurb about it.

I should preface this review with the fact that I am a paleontologist and I have been studying geology and paleontology for over 20 years. I came into reading The Origin of Species knowing full well that the text was written over 150 years ago and the science of paleontology and evolution has progressed at a lightening pace since then. That being said, I still was not sure what I was getting into when I read it. To quote my former evolutionary biology teacher "Don't read The Origin of Species unless you have to." This is a science textbook and that is how it reads. The science itself is severely out of date and the text is rather dull to boot. Since the science is not current, I recommend that someone reading this should have a basic scientific background so that they can understand where the science is questionable or not. The main problem I have with The Origin of Species is that instead of doing science experiments, Darwin typically takes observations and makes large leaps of logic to explain why his observations are the way they are. Granted this is a seminal and often interesting work of scientific history, but it is too much of a difficult read for me to recommend it.

Pretty much this is what the article states. The science is severely out of date. To the point where it is just wrong in many cases. Darwin's way of solving problems is also in question (by me). He looks at things (like giraffe neck lengths) and just assumes they evolved into longer necks. He does no science experiments or presents no theories, he just assumes. It is basically a religious view of science (again as I see it).

The main problem I have with Darwin is not his theories, it is how he is presented. I have seen countless scientists flaunting over him as if he created the world while he was just another step in the ladder of science. Great, he brought evolution to the forefront of society, but many others before and since have done a lot more work and should deserve the same amount, if not more, credit.